September 19, 2024 • 38 mins
Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of LanzaTech. Her problem is this: How do you capture pollution from factories, feed it to bacteria, and get the bacteria to produce ethanol, which can become everything from polyester to jet fuel?
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Today's show includes, among other things, directed evolution, rabbit poop,
sustainable aviation fuel, and polyester. Let's do It. I'm Jacob
(00:37):
Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Jennifer Holmgren, the CEO of lonz Tech.
Jennifer's problem is this, how do you take pollution from
steel plants, smokestacks, beat it to bacteria and get the
bacteria to excrete Ethanol. Ethanol is a kind of alcohol.
(01:02):
It's the kind of alcohol you drink, and in addition
to being made in the alcohol you drink, ethanol is
made as a fuel additive. In that context, it's often
made from corn or sugarcane. But expanding the footprint of
industrial agriculture to grow, say more corn for fuel, can
mean more emissions and higher food prices. Hence the idea
(01:26):
behind lonz tech find a different source of ethanol, one
that doesn't require food crops. Lonza Tech was founded in
two thousand and five by two scientists from New Zealand.
Jennifer Holmgren was not one of them. She joined the
company as CEO in twenty ten, when Lonzo Tech was
moving from a sort of proof of concept to scaling
(01:47):
in the real world. We started our conversation by talking
about the scientific work that led to the company's creation.
So is it right that the first kind of insight
or idea is that there is a bacteria that ideally,
theoretically could turn pollution carbon monoxide into ethanol.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's right. And the founders knew that this was possible
because they knew that they were gas eating organisms, and
they were able to go to a library in Germany
which stores organisms that are known and cataloged and say
I want that one, and that one and that one,
and bring it to their lab and start using it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So they were getting like vials of bacteria.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, yeah, huh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And did they find one that worked.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Absolutely. But they had to do a lot of optimization
because it's a bacteria that wants to make a different molecule, acetate,
and they wanted to make ethanol, and so they had
to do a lot of work to optimize the bacteria.
And they did it without using genetic methods. They did
it all by directed evolution, kind of like you you know,
put two orkids together to make a third, So let's.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Let's talk about that a little bit. So what what
was the bacteria that they found.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's called C. Auto. So the long name is C.
Auto orhanogenum, and we call it seouto, and it is
an anaerobe. You can only find it in places where
there's no oxygen, but it was around at the beginning
of the Earth when there was no oxygen.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Glory days exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's glory days. We like to say, it's our great
great great great great grandfather.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, where does it hide? Where does a where does
a microbe that doesn't like oxygen hide? Today?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, it's been found in you know, gut biome like
from rabbits. It's been found in.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Is it true that it's in rabbit poop?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well? Yeah, so I was trying to be more delicate
and saying bottom, yeah, take rabbit poop. Yeah, it's found
in rabbit poop. So for all we know, it could
be in our guts too. I don't know, but it's
definitely in rabbit pooh. It is in you can find
it in vents, underwaters, you can find it in all
(04:10):
of these places where and it's that's actually one of
the neat things about this bacteria. It is robust, it's strong,
and it doesn't like oxygen, so oxygen will kill it.
But it is something that allows you to do industrial biotech.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Huh. So they find this very ancient bacteria. It's robust,
but it's not it's not evolved to make ethanol. It's
not evolved to make what you want. What's it evolved
to make?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It makes acitate as a primary product. So yeah, they
evolved it to make ethanol as the primary product.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So there is this sort of field of directed evolution, right,
that is that that they're using here to like tell
me about directed evolution. That's a relatively young field in
this context, right, What is it? What does it mean?
How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, it means you're putting stress on the bacteria and
select colonies that are making what you wanted to make,
and if you wanted to make ethanol, you select for those.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So eventually, through sort of applying selective pressure in this way,
they get to a strain of c auto that loves
to make ethanol.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay, yep. And that's around the time you get to
the company, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, So there was still optimization to be done, and
they had started using doing a pilot at a steel
mill in New Zealand, and so I knew the system worked.
I just didn't know how scalable it was to commercial scale.
And by scalable I don't mean that you couldn't build
a big one, but that you could make money for
(05:52):
me building a big one.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That's such a huge issue, right, Like this idea of
people call it technoeconomics. Like there are a million clever
ideas like this that are elegant and intellectually satisfying. But
in this big sort of commodity, global scale world, the
question is like, great, but can you make it at
(06:14):
a competitive price at scale? Right? So how do you
start to answer that question?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, I think you need to start with what you
think you can do, and then you validate it as
you go from lab to pilot to demo, and then
you ask yourself what else do I need to do
to make it economic? And in our case, it's a
really great bioreactor. It's also water recycling and media. If
(06:44):
you don't you know, let me explain media. So when
you grow a plant, you need fertilizer, right, nitrogen sulfur.
And so what we had to do was figure out
how to feed at a minimum amount of nitrogen and
sulfur envitnments. All of these little things energy use, All
of these impact the cost and so in a lot
(07:06):
of ways, I like to think of a technoeconomic analysis
as a tool that allows you to say, I got
to optimize that because it's too expensive.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
So now you have factories in countries around the world.
You were to some degree at least operating at scale.
I'm curious, what are a few things you had to
learn to get here?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, I think a specific one is finding the right partners.
We ended up going to China because we were looking
for a steel mill that we could work with, and
fifty percent of the world steel was made in China.
They were also in growth mode. They wanted to reduce
their carbon intensity, but they wanted to use it as
a license to grow. And so China was in the
(07:49):
right mode to think about new technologies, and so we
were able to go there find a partner who was
interested in using our technology and then demonstrating it. We
built one hundred thousand gallon a year facility, and then
we use that as a path to building basically a
fifteen million gallon a year of facilacility, and that's what
(08:10):
we have operating now. We have six facilities, average size
thirty to fifty million gallons a year.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Meaning each one produces thirty to fifty million gallons of ethanol.
So tell me about a couple of the things you
learned going from you know, the lab to tens of
millions of gallons a year, Like, what were a couple
of things that didn't work the first time that you
had to figure out sort of specifically.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
You know, the bacteria's robust, like I told you, but
it also needs to be coddled a little bit sometimes,
and so you need to install some type of pre treatment,
and so learning how to pre treat cheaply it was
very important. Learning when we went from doing a steel
milk gas to a fair alloy gas to a gas
(09:01):
that's made from municipal solid waste right from trash. You
you kind of handle the gas a little bit differently.
And so we had focused on our process and we
had spent some time on the gas, but we really learned,
you know what, spend a little more time on the gas.
So that's one thing we learn. The second thing I
(09:21):
think we learned, and something that's obvious right, Building good
relationships matters, right. Nothing works the first time, and having
partners that are willing to be on the journey to
improve and optimize as you scale is important. Right. These
units are not like a Christmas gift. You open the
box and voila, we're running a capacity. And so really
(09:44):
it's about your partners and about their commitment to you,
to the technology and to getting to scale.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Let's talk about just what it looks like. So you
said you have how many how many operating six are
their China and India and Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We have one in Europe as well in Ghent in
Belgium with our solar middle.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So in a somewhat abstracted way, just like basically, what
does one of your facilities look like?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Maybe we should start at the at the smoke stack, right,
So there is what used to be pollution coming out
a smoke stack or what happens.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
You don't let it go out, You intercept it before
it goes out, You compress it and you put it
into a reactor.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So there's a gas and you particularly you want carbon monoxide.
Still is that your.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Put you want carbon monoxide? You can also use carbon
dioxide if you have hydrogen. It depends on whether you
have hydrogen or not how well you can process carbon dioxide.
So let's just focus on carbon monoxide. That's like sugar
for our bacteria. It's like yum, I'll take that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So then is the first thing you have to do?
Separate out the carbon monoxide from the rest of the gas.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You don't, Okay, So if you have a carbon monoxide,
say forty percent carbon monoxide stream in a bunch of
other gases, you can just pump that into your bioreactor
and the bacteria will find it carbon monoxide and you'll
just ignore all the other molecules floating around.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Okay, So you pump that into the bioreactor. What's it
what's it look like inside the biorector? What's going on
in there?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, so imagine a bunch of bubbles and imagine you've
got bacteria that are dividing. Right, they're alive, they're dividing.
So it's kind of not a clear liquid. You're you're
seeing what look like little grape particles in there, but
it's just bacteria floating about. Gas bubbles come in. That's
all you see. And then on the back end you
(11:41):
see ethanol.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And in the bubbles in the tank. Is that like
a medium you have created that your bacteria likes to
live in.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
That's that's right, that's right. They're getting their vitamins, they're
getting their minerals, they're getting their carbon source, that carbon monoxide,
and they're floating about enjoying their day.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And you're bubbling in the carbon monoxide the way like
if there's a fish tank, you just bubble in the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Air exactly now. It it's continued. The process is constantly
and the water is constantly moving around, and so it's
not quite like a fish tank. But it's a great
analogy and that works really well. And the key you
said the bubbles like a fish tank. The key is
to make those bubbles as small as possible. So it's
(12:27):
kind of faking out a dissolution, right, It's like they're
dissolved the amount of dissolved carbon monoxide getting to the
bacteria so that they can find it, eat it and
poop out ethanol.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And how does the ethanol sort of come out of
the tank.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
The ethanol is with water, and so we have to
distill the ethanol out and then we take the water
which also has media and other things and pump it
back into the reactors so that we're not wasting anything.
We're you know, we're separating the bacteria, putting it back
in the reactor, separating the ethanol through distillation, and then
(13:05):
you just take the ethanol and clean it as much
as you want. For fuel grade to blend with gasoline
doesn't need to be that clean. For putting it into cosmetics,
it needs to be really clean.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And who are you selling your ethanol to, So.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Most of the ethanol goes into blending with gasoline. That's
what our partner in China is doing. But what we
do is we take a small amount of it right
now and we've used it to do project development or
brand development. So Cody, for example, uses our ethanol in
some of their perfumes. We've also converted it to polyester,
(13:45):
and On has made running apparel with the polyester made
from these recycled emissions. Mebel has used it in cleaning products.
So we have quite a few partners that you would recognize,
H and M. Craghoppers, they've all used our polyester. And
it's kind of neat, right because if you stop and
(14:06):
for a second think about this, you say, you know
this was going to be pollution, it was going to
be greenhouse gases and particulates and instead I'm wearing it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, and how's the price.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So it's more expensive than conventional polyesters. It's you would say,
it's anywhere between one hundred and fifty twoe hundred and
seventy percent. Fortunately, we have partners who are willing to
pay more in the raw materials because the raw material
is not what impacts the price of the product.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Right, they can pay They can pay significantly more for
the polyester, and it's such a trivial percentage of the
final cost of the good that it doesn't move the
needle much.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, you know, I would have thought exactly the way
you just said it. But unfortunately what it does is
it impacts their margins. And in a world that's obsessed
with profit and margins, you have to give credit to
our partners for being able to say I am going
to make an investment in creating this right because their
(15:12):
business leaders are not getting the margins that others are getting.
And so I think this is something I want to
really hash out because I think we're driven to reduce
our costs and to increase our profit and we've got
these brave souls who are saying, well, I got to
reduce carbon too, and that's important to us and to
(15:34):
our future. And I'm going to go against the trend,
and I'm not going to reduce my costs or increase
my profit. I am going to do something good. So
ARII Craghoppers has a whole line of clothing with our stuff,
and they're trying to help us get to a scale
where we can reduce the costs so that maybe someday
(15:55):
they'll get to the margins they need.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like it's
great that these companies want to do this. But to
be meaningful at a global level, you need to get
to a place where the ethanol you sell is the
same price as other ethanol, right, And I'm curious what
has to happen for you to get there? Well, first
(16:19):
of all, is that right? Do you think of it
the same way? Are you trying to get to a
place where your ethanol has cost the same as corn
ethanol or any other ethanol?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right now, it's actually pretty close to corn ethanol. It's
just that it costs a lot more than ethylene, which
is how polyesters made.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I see, So for fuel. Is the ethanol you make
price competitive?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It is pretty equivalent. Yeah. Yeah, the capital installed cost
is much higher because they've optimized their capital for years
and well hundreds of years, whereas we have not. But
once you get past the capital recovery piece, the costs
are about the same.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So you're saying you're like competing against sort of depreciated assets.
They built factories a long time ago. They don't sort
of have to pay for the factories every month the
way you do that kind of thing, that kind of challenge.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's right, that's right, But we'll get there. But you
ask the more important question, and I guess we're focused
on keeping carbon in the ground. At the end of
the day, this lineary economy is not going to work,
and we need to find a way to reuse all
carbon that's already in circulation in our system, whether it's
(17:27):
municipal solid waste, whether it's industrial waste, whether it's CO
two that's in the atmosphere. We've got to figure out
how to use that as the resource from which everything
is made. So it's great, we need to reduce consumption,
don't get me wrong, but we have a whole lot
of global economies that are growing, and so how do
we deliver to them what they need without pulling more
(17:51):
carbon out of the ground. And that is what we
focus on. So the question is are you cost competitive? Well,
there's a lot of things that we can do that
make us cost competitive when we get the bigger scales
and we deploy more units. You know, this is the
beginning of the journey, right the early days of the
cell phone versus now. And so what you've got to
do is just build more and reduce costs, improve the technology,
(18:13):
reduce costs. But the other thing that biology allows you
to do is it allows you to skip steps that
you would naturally use in the petrochemical world. So today
to make polyester, I go from ethanol to ethylene to
ethylene oxide to meg to polyester. Now what if I
(18:34):
could go from the gas not to ethanol, but to meg.
Now I've put that whole supply chain inside my bacteria.
Now I can be competitive because I'm processing less and
I'm doing it at room close to room temperature, not
like a thermo catalytic process. So there is a day
(18:55):
when I believe we'll be competitive, but I think we're
always going to have to ask ourselves the question what
are the externalities that go along with the costs of
the things we buy? And I know that's a delusional question.
Everybody's like, well, we'll just take not all of those
and get a lot of keep stuff made from fossil carbon.
But are we going to carbon tax? Do I have
(19:16):
to be competitive with fossil.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Well, like a carbon tax would solve the externality problem, right.
The problem is when people use fossil fuel, they pollute,
and they impose a cost on the world, and that
cost is not reflected in the price of the good,
and that is a market failure and you are competing
against that market failure. And I agree that a carbon
tax is a good idea, it's hasn't taken off politically
(19:40):
in a broad way. So that's a challenge, right, And
like people being willing to pay a green premium, seems
limited by human nature at some margin.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
And that's why I want you to applaud the people
that are trying fair enough.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
In a minute, how Lonza Tech is working on developing
sustainable jet fuel. Airplane emissions are a really hard problem
(20:20):
to solve. The physics of flight make it hard to
create an economically sound electric plane, although people are working
on that. People are working on hydrogen powered planes, but
that's also really hard. It's clearly going to take a
long time. So in the short to medium term progress
is more likely to come from what are known as
(20:40):
drop in sustainable aviation fuels, as in you can just
drop them into the currently used fuels without having to
redesign the whole plane. And Jennifer Holmgren has been working
on drop in sustainable fuels since before she came to
Lunza Tech.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I've been working on sustainable aviation fuel from before there
was such a thing as a drop in sustainable aviation fuel.
So I worked on the first drop in fuels in
my old job. We did flight demos, flight of the
Green Hornet, all of that. We showed that you could
make a hydrocarbon right and biofuels until then were oxygenates, ethanol, biodiesel,
(21:21):
So we showed we could make a hydrocarbon that looked
exactly like jet fuel, and that was certified. Those are
the first drops that were certified for sustainable aviation fuel.
All of the fuel that's made today that goes into
an airplane that is not made from fossil carbon is
made with that type of a process that takes fats, oils,
(21:44):
greases and makes them to sustainable aviation fuel. The problem
with that is how much we go back to the
same problem we started with. How much of these biological
feedstocks are there? The world uses one hundred billion gallons
of aviation fuel today. You can't do it just food.
(22:05):
And so when I came to lands Attack, I wanted
to develop a route to aviation fuel from all of
this ethanol that you could make from all of these
waste resources. And that's why we were Pacific Northwest National
Lab to develop a route to take ethanol. Any kind
of ethanol doesn't have to be ours. Lots of other
people know how to make ethanol to make sustainable aviation fuel.
(22:28):
When we got that certified for flight, we did the
ASDM work. We flew a flight with Virgin Atlantic from
Orlando to Gatwick commercial flight by the way, that was
kind of cool, two hundred plus people on board, made
from recycled steel mill emissions. We realized that what we
needed to do was build a ten million gallon a
(22:50):
year facility, a large commercial scale, mini commercial scale facility,
and so what we decided to do is to launch
land SUGGETI zone entity and raise cash into it so
that we could build that plant and go really really fast.
And so that plant is in Georgia and it's in Soaprodue, Georgia,
(23:12):
and it should be starting up momentarily.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I would say more like tomorrow. What does momentarily mean.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And think of it in it's in the last stages
of shakedown, say within the next couple of months kind
of differing.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And what's going to happen at that factory.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We're going to take ethanol and we're going to contain
convert it to sustainable aviation fuel using the lens of
jet alcohol, ethanol to sustainable aviation fuel, alcohol to jet technology.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And is that fuel like a supplement? Like how does
that work?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Right now? Certification is for fifty to fifty blends. You
can only put it with kerosene fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And are you using the ethanol you make from pollution
from waste emissions at that plant?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, Because we decided that since what we needed to
prove at commercial scale was the sustainable aviation field technology,
we could use any ethanol to do that. We didn't
need to raise the capital to build both. And so
right now it can use our ethanol made from waste emissions,
or it can use sugar cane ethanol, corn ethanol, cellulos
(24:28):
any ethanol that they can find. That's the first part
of the journey is just to show that they can
get that technology to commercial scale.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And what ethanol In fact, what is the source of
the ethanol you're going to use there?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The first ethanol will be sugarcane ethanol that's been brought
from Brazil.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And so what is the broader context for sustainable jet
fuel right now? Like I know that's the whole conversation.
Planes are very hard to decarbonize in many ways, So
give me the broader context for jet fuel and where
your plant fits.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Well, you know, the world uses one hundred billion gallons
a year of aviation fuel. The target that the industry
has set for itself is a minimum of ten billion
gallons by twenty thirty of sustainable aviation fuel. And today
we're in the hundreds. It's let's say one hundred million gallons.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Okay, So it has to go up by a factor
of one hundred in a few years if they're going
to make that. And just just like really dumb question,
like what makes sustainable aviation fuel sustainable, Like what does
it mean to say sustainable aviation fuel? Like what is that?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It just means it has a lower carbon footprint, but
it doesn't do it at the cost of a very
large water footprint or other things. Right, So the full
life cycle analysis, the focus those in greenhouse gas emissions
and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And is the basic idea that ethanol has lower greenhouse
gas emissions? That and oil as a source for jet
fuel And is that the very basic idea?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, So the basic idea is take the ethanol to
aviation fuel and compare that to fossil derived petroleum derive
aviation fuel. That's where you make the comparison, not at
the petroleum. That's a hard comparison to make. You make
it at the product what you're going to put on
the plane.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
And so just tell me more about you know, you're
building a sustainable jet fuel plant, Like what is the
broader industry? Like are there different technologies at your plant?
Like what, I don't know anything about that side of
the business. Tell me something about it.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You know, you need to imagine a refinery, right, that's
exactly what this looks like. If you drive by our
plant in Soupertin, you it'll be like you're looking at
a refinery, a refinery that is small, because refineries actually
take very dense liquid and convert it to a bunch
of different products through a bunch of unit operations. We
(27:11):
only have really compact unit operation. It's really three steps.
Takes the ethanol to ethylene, think of that, then take
ethylene to sustainable aviation fuel in a two step process.
The ethanol to ethylene is done with our partner technique.
They have a technology that efficiently takes ethanol to ethylene
(27:31):
and then we go from.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
There and is the hope that you will use your
Lonza tech ethanol as the input at this plant soon eventually.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Sure, we will use it at this plant. But also
one of the things we're doing is building plants together.
We have projects across the world in Europe, in the
Middle East where we're taking waste like municipal solid waste,
taking it to ethanol and taking ethanol to saffaf is
sustainable aviation. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
And we call that circular air by the way, that
joint offering because obviously it's circular carbon from waste to
aviation fuel, and it's the joint lens of tech lansa jet.
So we do expect this plant, to expect other plants
to use our ethanol, but moreover, we expect integrated solutions.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I feel like there's this long history of people trying
to use synthetic biology biotechnology to make fuel, and it
has been really hard for a long time, and people
talk about why it used to be a bad idea
or why people who aren't making fuel talk about why
(28:51):
fuel is not the right thing to make, Like, tell
me about that history.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I mean, look, you're trying to do something that's been
done in a specific way for over one hundred and
twenty years, right, and so now you're going to say, well,
I'm going to do it in new way and oh,
by the way, it's going to be cheaper, cleaner, and better.
And it's like, okay, let's get a dose of realism here.
(29:19):
When you look at sustainable aviation fuel. I believe that
the use of fat, soils and lipids, which is what
is being done today. We're seeing more and more plants
being built, so you're starting to get to the Okay,
this is the cheaper part of the curve. Just like
we did with solar, just like we did with cell phones.
The only problem is now you've got to get to
(29:40):
a point where you're going to be feedstock limited. And
we just have to do the same thing with our
technology and other technologies that are out there. Build enough,
get to capacity, reduce costs, and keep building. And I
think most people don't think about technology that way. Is
sort of expected magically to show up without remembering. I
(30:00):
always used to laugh, you know, I remember in twenty ten,
because I have these articles. You'd see all of these publications.
You know, solar is ten years out and will always
be ten years out. Those were literally the headlines, right,
you're nodding, so I know you remember this. But here
we are. You can't turn around without seeing a solar installation,
(30:21):
and every day we make it cheaper and better. It's
cost competitive with fossil carbon power. And I just think
people need to realize new technologies take twenty thirty plus
years to deploy in a way that makes sense, and
our technology is completely disruptive. Nobody had ever done this
gas fermentation before, so I think a thirty year cycle
(30:44):
to get to where you're economically viable and competitive everywhere
is not unreasonable. We've been around for twenty years. We
know our technology works. We derisk the technology, we've deristd
the market. But now instead of deploying five at a time,
we want to desploy twenty at a time. So you
got to reduce the costs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
What what do you think might go wrong? Like, what
would be reasons you might not make it to where
you want to get to.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, that's a lovely question. The hurdles are big, right,
you know, legislation stands against you. Nobody'd ever heard of
us doing gas fermentations. So corn and sugar cane, ethanol
get incentives in the United States that we don't receive.
(31:38):
So it's very hard to be competitive with something that's
getting an incentive. I used the Tesla example. Remember Tesla
couldn't sell in New Jersey because it didn't have dealerships
and there were rules that actually block new ideas, new
marketing methods, new sales method and that's the same thing
with what we do. I also think there is this
(31:59):
natural skepticism of anything new, and we always try to
find the problem with it. And so for the first
thirty years, twenty years, you've got to deal with people
telling you what you're doing is wrong, and nobody ever says, Okay,
what you're doing may not work, but that's okay because
what we're doing isn't working and so we need to
(32:21):
replace it. And so to me, what slows us down
is people asking the wrong questions. And I always say,
this is a sector where we need allies. We need
people saying they're going to get there. You need to
push them along and to help them along. And this
(32:43):
is what we're going to do to help these industries grow.
Rather than not cost effective, not the same profit, not
a good idea, I mean that negativism is draining.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Thank you for going down the road of the sad story. Oh,
let's talk about the happy story now, Like, tell me
the happy story. What's what's the happy story of the
next ten years.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, the happy story is very simple. We have shown
that you can take every type of waste carbon that's
already above ground and make the products you use every
day sustainable aviation fuel. We decarbonized steel mills at the
same time that we decarbonize aviation, right, And you can
poo poo that all you want, but the fact is
we've done it. We've shown it. It works. And nobody
(33:32):
can tell me that fresh fossil carbon is the future,
and I can tell you, let's just keep that carbon
in the ground. So what do the next ten years
look like for us? We're going to keep showing you
that We're going to show you that food, fuel and
chemicals can all be made from waste carbon that's above ground.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And specifically, like, what are the sort of big, big
projects in the kind of short to medium term for you?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Well, I think some of our big projects. First of all,
we've got to scale sustainable aviation fuel, and so showing
our first plant and its economics is going to enable
a bunch of other plants to get built. The other
thing I want to show is integration more and more
to reduce costs. What you don't want is a unit
(34:21):
that makes ethanol and a unit that makes aviation fuel,
you know, next to each other and not integrated, or
a unit that makes hydrogen that we need to convert
CO two being a separate standalone. The more we integrate,
the cheaper things get right. And so to me, as
we make our technology cheaper, I want to also show
(34:43):
that integration with others is cheaper and cheaper, and that's
where your economies come in. And the final thing I
want to do is just really show that biology needs
to be thought of differently. We you know, petroleum is
densest liquid known to man. That's why we've grown these massive,
centralized refineries. What biology can do is use local resources,
(35:08):
enabl a country to use its local feedstocks and be
able to make selectively the product it wants. So do
you want to make aviation fuel great? Do you want
to make polyester great? And we want to do this
and leverage the power of biology to enable economies to
(35:30):
grow while their population grows, because the biggest concern I
have is if you're developing economy and you're watching your
population grow, every time they buy something, a dollar goes
out of the country, so somebody else gets paid for
the goods. I want people to be able to grow
(35:50):
and grow their economies and grow the jobs and grow
everything at the same time. And I think biology, with
its ability to be distributed and local enables that, and frankly,
I don't think anything else does. And I want to
show that over the next five to ten years.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
I want to finish with a lightning round oh uh Oh.
Your dad, I have read, was an airline mechanic. Yeah,
(36:31):
and I'm curious how his work influenced you.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
He taught me how to fix things and to want
to fix things, and to care about aviation.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
What was something you fixed with your dad?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Oh? Everything. I crawled around planes, although I never fixed anything.
I just crawled around with him on planes and cars
and things.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, that's cool. What's one thing I should do if
I visit Columbia?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Oh, my gosh, eat the food. Yeah, the food is amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What's one thing I should eat?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
My favorite petic I don't know what are That's some
plantains that are not ripe, so they're green, and you
sqush them and you fry them and you squish them
again and you put salt on them. It's kind of
like the French fries of Barankilla, which is where I
grew up.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I understand that you went to the Paris Olympics. Oh,
and you know, obviously you work a lot with microbes,
and so I'm curious. Would you swim in the sun? Ah?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
I no.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Tell me about the first greyhound that you rescued.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We rescued two dogs, two greyhounds that had badly broken
their legs and they had been repaired by an agency,
and then we adopted them. I learned that thirty percent
of greyhounds wash out because they've broken something or have
(38:12):
been injured. It's a very sad, sad, sad thing, and
they are amazing dogs, amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of Lanz Tech. Today's show
was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by
Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer. You can
email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another episode
of What's Your Problem
Pushkin. Today's show includes, among other things, directed evolution, rabbit poop,
sustainable aviation fuel, and polyester. Let's do It. I'm Jacob
(00:37):
Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Jennifer Holmgren, the CEO of lonz Tech.
Jennifer's problem is this, how do you take pollution from
steel plants, smokestacks, beat it to bacteria and get the
bacteria to excrete Ethanol. Ethanol is a kind of alcohol.
(01:02):
It's the kind of alcohol you drink, and in addition
to being made in the alcohol you drink, ethanol is
made as a fuel additive. In that context, it's often
made from corn or sugarcane. But expanding the footprint of
industrial agriculture to grow, say more corn for fuel, can
mean more emissions and higher food prices. Hence the idea
(01:26):
behind lonz tech find a different source of ethanol, one
that doesn't require food crops. Lonza Tech was founded in
two thousand and five by two scientists from New Zealand.
Jennifer Holmgren was not one of them. She joined the
company as CEO in twenty ten, when Lonzo Tech was
moving from a sort of proof of concept to scaling
(01:47):
in the real world. We started our conversation by talking
about the scientific work that led to the company's creation.
So is it right that the first kind of insight
or idea is that there is a bacteria that ideally,
theoretically could turn pollution carbon monoxide into ethanol.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's right. And the founders knew that this was possible
because they knew that they were gas eating organisms, and
they were able to go to a library in Germany
which stores organisms that are known and cataloged and say
I want that one, and that one and that one,
and bring it to their lab and start using it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So they were getting like vials of bacteria.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, yeah, huh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And did they find one that worked.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Absolutely. But they had to do a lot of optimization
because it's a bacteria that wants to make a different molecule, acetate,
and they wanted to make ethanol, and so they had
to do a lot of work to optimize the bacteria.
And they did it without using genetic methods. They did
it all by directed evolution, kind of like you you know,
put two orkids together to make a third, So let's.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Let's talk about that a little bit. So what what
was the bacteria that they found.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's called C. Auto. So the long name is C.
Auto orhanogenum, and we call it seouto, and it is
an anaerobe. You can only find it in places where
there's no oxygen, but it was around at the beginning
of the Earth when there was no oxygen.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Glory days exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's glory days. We like to say, it's our great
great great great great grandfather.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, where does it hide? Where does a where does
a microbe that doesn't like oxygen hide? Today?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, it's been found in you know, gut biome like
from rabbits. It's been found in.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Is it true that it's in rabbit poop?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well? Yeah, so I was trying to be more delicate
and saying bottom, yeah, take rabbit poop. Yeah, it's found
in rabbit poop. So for all we know, it could
be in our guts too. I don't know, but it's
definitely in rabbit pooh. It is in you can find
it in vents, underwaters, you can find it in all
(04:10):
of these places where and it's that's actually one of
the neat things about this bacteria. It is robust, it's strong,
and it doesn't like oxygen, so oxygen will kill it.
But it is something that allows you to do industrial biotech.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Huh. So they find this very ancient bacteria. It's robust,
but it's not it's not evolved to make ethanol. It's
not evolved to make what you want. What's it evolved
to make?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It makes acitate as a primary product. So yeah, they
evolved it to make ethanol as the primary product.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So there is this sort of field of directed evolution, right,
that is that that they're using here to like tell
me about directed evolution. That's a relatively young field in
this context, right, What is it? What does it mean?
How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, it means you're putting stress on the bacteria and
select colonies that are making what you wanted to make,
and if you wanted to make ethanol, you select for those.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So eventually, through sort of applying selective pressure in this way,
they get to a strain of c auto that loves
to make ethanol.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay, yep. And that's around the time you get to
the company, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, So there was still optimization to be done, and
they had started using doing a pilot at a steel
mill in New Zealand, and so I knew the system worked.
I just didn't know how scalable it was to commercial scale.
And by scalable I don't mean that you couldn't build
a big one, but that you could make money for
(05:52):
me building a big one.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That's such a huge issue, right, Like this idea of
people call it technoeconomics. Like there are a million clever
ideas like this that are elegant and intellectually satisfying. But
in this big sort of commodity, global scale world, the
question is like, great, but can you make it at
(06:14):
a competitive price at scale? Right? So how do you
start to answer that question?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, I think you need to start with what you
think you can do, and then you validate it as
you go from lab to pilot to demo, and then
you ask yourself what else do I need to do
to make it economic? And in our case, it's a
really great bioreactor. It's also water recycling and media. If
(06:44):
you don't you know, let me explain media. So when
you grow a plant, you need fertilizer, right, nitrogen sulfur.
And so what we had to do was figure out
how to feed at a minimum amount of nitrogen and
sulfur envitnments. All of these little things energy use, All
of these impact the cost and so in a lot
(07:06):
of ways, I like to think of a technoeconomic analysis
as a tool that allows you to say, I got
to optimize that because it's too expensive.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
So now you have factories in countries around the world.
You were to some degree at least operating at scale.
I'm curious, what are a few things you had to
learn to get here?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, I think a specific one is finding the right partners.
We ended up going to China because we were looking
for a steel mill that we could work with, and
fifty percent of the world steel was made in China.
They were also in growth mode. They wanted to reduce
their carbon intensity, but they wanted to use it as
a license to grow. And so China was in the
(07:49):
right mode to think about new technologies, and so we
were able to go there find a partner who was
interested in using our technology and then demonstrating it. We
built one hundred thousand gallon a year facility, and then
we use that as a path to building basically a
fifteen million gallon a year of facilacility, and that's what
(08:10):
we have operating now. We have six facilities, average size
thirty to fifty million gallons a year.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Meaning each one produces thirty to fifty million gallons of ethanol.
So tell me about a couple of the things you
learned going from you know, the lab to tens of
millions of gallons a year, Like, what were a couple
of things that didn't work the first time that you
had to figure out sort of specifically.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
You know, the bacteria's robust, like I told you, but
it also needs to be coddled a little bit sometimes,
and so you need to install some type of pre treatment,
and so learning how to pre treat cheaply it was
very important. Learning when we went from doing a steel
milk gas to a fair alloy gas to a gas
(09:01):
that's made from municipal solid waste right from trash. You
you kind of handle the gas a little bit differently.
And so we had focused on our process and we
had spent some time on the gas, but we really learned,
you know what, spend a little more time on the gas.
So that's one thing we learn. The second thing I
(09:21):
think we learned, and something that's obvious right, Building good
relationships matters, right. Nothing works the first time, and having
partners that are willing to be on the journey to
improve and optimize as you scale is important. Right. These
units are not like a Christmas gift. You open the
box and voila, we're running a capacity. And so really
(09:44):
it's about your partners and about their commitment to you,
to the technology and to getting to scale.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Let's talk about just what it looks like. So you
said you have how many how many operating six are
their China and India and Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We have one in Europe as well in Ghent in
Belgium with our solar middle.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So in a somewhat abstracted way, just like basically, what
does one of your facilities look like?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Maybe we should start at the at the smoke stack, right,
So there is what used to be pollution coming out
a smoke stack or what happens.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
You don't let it go out, You intercept it before
it goes out, You compress it and you put it
into a reactor.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So there's a gas and you particularly you want carbon monoxide.
Still is that your.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Put you want carbon monoxide? You can also use carbon
dioxide if you have hydrogen. It depends on whether you
have hydrogen or not how well you can process carbon dioxide.
So let's just focus on carbon monoxide. That's like sugar
for our bacteria. It's like yum, I'll take that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So then is the first thing you have to do?
Separate out the carbon monoxide from the rest of the gas.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You don't, Okay, So if you have a carbon monoxide,
say forty percent carbon monoxide stream in a bunch of
other gases, you can just pump that into your bioreactor
and the bacteria will find it carbon monoxide and you'll
just ignore all the other molecules floating around.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Okay, So you pump that into the bioreactor. What's it
what's it look like inside the biorector? What's going on
in there?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, so imagine a bunch of bubbles and imagine you've
got bacteria that are dividing. Right, they're alive, they're dividing.
So it's kind of not a clear liquid. You're you're
seeing what look like little grape particles in there, but
it's just bacteria floating about. Gas bubbles come in. That's
all you see. And then on the back end you
(11:41):
see ethanol.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And in the bubbles in the tank. Is that like
a medium you have created that your bacteria likes to
live in.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
That's that's right, that's right. They're getting their vitamins, they're
getting their minerals, they're getting their carbon source, that carbon monoxide,
and they're floating about enjoying their day.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And you're bubbling in the carbon monoxide the way like
if there's a fish tank, you just bubble in the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Air exactly now. It it's continued. The process is constantly
and the water is constantly moving around, and so it's
not quite like a fish tank. But it's a great
analogy and that works really well. And the key you
said the bubbles like a fish tank. The key is
to make those bubbles as small as possible. So it's
(12:27):
kind of faking out a dissolution, right, It's like they're
dissolved the amount of dissolved carbon monoxide getting to the
bacteria so that they can find it, eat it and
poop out ethanol.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And how does the ethanol sort of come out of
the tank.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
The ethanol is with water, and so we have to
distill the ethanol out and then we take the water
which also has media and other things and pump it
back into the reactors so that we're not wasting anything.
We're you know, we're separating the bacteria, putting it back
in the reactor, separating the ethanol through distillation, and then
(13:05):
you just take the ethanol and clean it as much
as you want. For fuel grade to blend with gasoline
doesn't need to be that clean. For putting it into cosmetics,
it needs to be really clean.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And who are you selling your ethanol to, So.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Most of the ethanol goes into blending with gasoline. That's
what our partner in China is doing. But what we
do is we take a small amount of it right
now and we've used it to do project development or
brand development. So Cody, for example, uses our ethanol in
some of their perfumes. We've also converted it to polyester,
(13:45):
and On has made running apparel with the polyester made
from these recycled emissions. Mebel has used it in cleaning products.
So we have quite a few partners that you would recognize,
H and M. Craghoppers, they've all used our polyester. And
it's kind of neat, right because if you stop and
(14:06):
for a second think about this, you say, you know
this was going to be pollution, it was going to
be greenhouse gases and particulates and instead I'm wearing it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, and how's the price.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So it's more expensive than conventional polyesters. It's you would say,
it's anywhere between one hundred and fifty twoe hundred and
seventy percent. Fortunately, we have partners who are willing to
pay more in the raw materials because the raw material
is not what impacts the price of the product.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Right, they can pay They can pay significantly more for
the polyester, and it's such a trivial percentage of the
final cost of the good that it doesn't move the
needle much.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, you know, I would have thought exactly the way
you just said it. But unfortunately what it does is
it impacts their margins. And in a world that's obsessed
with profit and margins, you have to give credit to
our partners for being able to say I am going
to make an investment in creating this right because their
(15:12):
business leaders are not getting the margins that others are getting.
And so I think this is something I want to
really hash out because I think we're driven to reduce
our costs and to increase our profit and we've got
these brave souls who are saying, well, I got to
reduce carbon too, and that's important to us and to
(15:34):
our future. And I'm going to go against the trend,
and I'm not going to reduce my costs or increase
my profit. I am going to do something good. So
ARII Craghoppers has a whole line of clothing with our stuff,
and they're trying to help us get to a scale
where we can reduce the costs so that maybe someday
(15:55):
they'll get to the margins they need.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like it's
great that these companies want to do this. But to
be meaningful at a global level, you need to get
to a place where the ethanol you sell is the
same price as other ethanol, right, And I'm curious what
has to happen for you to get there? Well, first
(16:19):
of all, is that right? Do you think of it
the same way? Are you trying to get to a
place where your ethanol has cost the same as corn
ethanol or any other ethanol?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right now, it's actually pretty close to corn ethanol. It's
just that it costs a lot more than ethylene, which
is how polyesters made.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I see, So for fuel. Is the ethanol you make
price competitive?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It is pretty equivalent. Yeah. Yeah, the capital installed cost
is much higher because they've optimized their capital for years
and well hundreds of years, whereas we have not. But
once you get past the capital recovery piece, the costs
are about the same.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So you're saying you're like competing against sort of depreciated assets.
They built factories a long time ago. They don't sort
of have to pay for the factories every month the
way you do that kind of thing, that kind of challenge.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's right, that's right, But we'll get there. But you
ask the more important question, and I guess we're focused
on keeping carbon in the ground. At the end of
the day, this lineary economy is not going to work,
and we need to find a way to reuse all
carbon that's already in circulation in our system, whether it's
(17:27):
municipal solid waste, whether it's industrial waste, whether it's CO
two that's in the atmosphere. We've got to figure out
how to use that as the resource from which everything
is made. So it's great, we need to reduce consumption,
don't get me wrong, but we have a whole lot
of global economies that are growing, and so how do
we deliver to them what they need without pulling more
(17:51):
carbon out of the ground. And that is what we
focus on. So the question is are you cost competitive? Well,
there's a lot of things that we can do that
make us cost competitive when we get the bigger scales
and we deploy more units. You know, this is the
beginning of the journey, right the early days of the
cell phone versus now. And so what you've got to
do is just build more and reduce costs, improve the technology,
(18:13):
reduce costs. But the other thing that biology allows you
to do is it allows you to skip steps that
you would naturally use in the petrochemical world. So today
to make polyester, I go from ethanol to ethylene to
ethylene oxide to meg to polyester. Now what if I
(18:34):
could go from the gas not to ethanol, but to meg.
Now I've put that whole supply chain inside my bacteria.
Now I can be competitive because I'm processing less and
I'm doing it at room close to room temperature, not
like a thermo catalytic process. So there is a day
(18:55):
when I believe we'll be competitive, but I think we're
always going to have to ask ourselves the question what
are the externalities that go along with the costs of
the things we buy? And I know that's a delusional question.
Everybody's like, well, we'll just take not all of those
and get a lot of keep stuff made from fossil carbon.
But are we going to carbon tax? Do I have
(19:16):
to be competitive with fossil.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Well, like a carbon tax would solve the externality problem, right.
The problem is when people use fossil fuel, they pollute,
and they impose a cost on the world, and that
cost is not reflected in the price of the good,
and that is a market failure and you are competing
against that market failure. And I agree that a carbon
tax is a good idea, it's hasn't taken off politically
(19:40):
in a broad way. So that's a challenge, right, And
like people being willing to pay a green premium, seems
limited by human nature at some margin.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
And that's why I want you to applaud the people
that are trying fair enough.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
In a minute, how Lonza Tech is working on developing
sustainable jet fuel. Airplane emissions are a really hard problem
(20:20):
to solve. The physics of flight make it hard to
create an economically sound electric plane, although people are working
on that. People are working on hydrogen powered planes, but
that's also really hard. It's clearly going to take a
long time. So in the short to medium term progress
is more likely to come from what are known as
(20:40):
drop in sustainable aviation fuels, as in you can just
drop them into the currently used fuels without having to
redesign the whole plane. And Jennifer Holmgren has been working
on drop in sustainable fuels since before she came to
Lunza Tech.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I've been working on sustainable aviation fuel from before there
was such a thing as a drop in sustainable aviation fuel.
So I worked on the first drop in fuels in
my old job. We did flight demos, flight of the
Green Hornet, all of that. We showed that you could
make a hydrocarbon right and biofuels until then were oxygenates, ethanol, biodiesel,
(21:21):
So we showed we could make a hydrocarbon that looked
exactly like jet fuel, and that was certified. Those are
the first drops that were certified for sustainable aviation fuel.
All of the fuel that's made today that goes into
an airplane that is not made from fossil carbon is
made with that type of a process that takes fats, oils,
(21:44):
greases and makes them to sustainable aviation fuel. The problem
with that is how much we go back to the
same problem we started with. How much of these biological
feedstocks are there? The world uses one hundred billion gallons
of aviation fuel today. You can't do it just food.
(22:05):
And so when I came to lands Attack, I wanted
to develop a route to aviation fuel from all of
this ethanol that you could make from all of these
waste resources. And that's why we were Pacific Northwest National
Lab to develop a route to take ethanol. Any kind
of ethanol doesn't have to be ours. Lots of other
people know how to make ethanol to make sustainable aviation fuel.
(22:28):
When we got that certified for flight, we did the
ASDM work. We flew a flight with Virgin Atlantic from
Orlando to Gatwick commercial flight by the way, that was
kind of cool, two hundred plus people on board, made
from recycled steel mill emissions. We realized that what we
needed to do was build a ten million gallon a
(22:50):
year facility, a large commercial scale, mini commercial scale facility,
and so what we decided to do is to launch
land SUGGETI zone entity and raise cash into it so
that we could build that plant and go really really fast.
And so that plant is in Georgia and it's in Soaprodue, Georgia,
(23:12):
and it should be starting up momentarily.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I would say more like tomorrow. What does momentarily mean.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And think of it in it's in the last stages
of shakedown, say within the next couple of months kind
of differing.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And what's going to happen at that factory.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We're going to take ethanol and we're going to contain
convert it to sustainable aviation fuel using the lens of
jet alcohol, ethanol to sustainable aviation fuel, alcohol to jet technology.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And is that fuel like a supplement? Like how does
that work?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Right now? Certification is for fifty to fifty blends. You
can only put it with kerosene fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
And are you using the ethanol you make from pollution
from waste emissions at that plant?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, Because we decided that since what we needed to
prove at commercial scale was the sustainable aviation field technology,
we could use any ethanol to do that. We didn't
need to raise the capital to build both. And so
right now it can use our ethanol made from waste emissions,
or it can use sugar cane ethanol, corn ethanol, cellulos
(24:28):
any ethanol that they can find. That's the first part
of the journey is just to show that they can
get that technology to commercial scale.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And what ethanol In fact, what is the source of
the ethanol you're going to use there?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The first ethanol will be sugarcane ethanol that's been brought
from Brazil.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And so what is the broader context for sustainable jet
fuel right now? Like I know that's the whole conversation.
Planes are very hard to decarbonize in many ways, So
give me the broader context for jet fuel and where
your plant fits.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Well, you know, the world uses one hundred billion gallons
a year of aviation fuel. The target that the industry
has set for itself is a minimum of ten billion
gallons by twenty thirty of sustainable aviation fuel. And today
we're in the hundreds. It's let's say one hundred million gallons.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Okay, So it has to go up by a factor
of one hundred in a few years if they're going
to make that. And just just like really dumb question,
like what makes sustainable aviation fuel sustainable, Like what does
it mean to say sustainable aviation fuel? Like what is that?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It just means it has a lower carbon footprint, but
it doesn't do it at the cost of a very
large water footprint or other things. Right, So the full
life cycle analysis, the focus those in greenhouse gas emissions
and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And is the basic idea that ethanol has lower greenhouse
gas emissions? That and oil as a source for jet
fuel And is that the very basic idea?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, So the basic idea is take the ethanol to
aviation fuel and compare that to fossil derived petroleum derive
aviation fuel. That's where you make the comparison, not at
the petroleum. That's a hard comparison to make. You make
it at the product what you're going to put on
the plane.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
And so just tell me more about you know, you're
building a sustainable jet fuel plant, Like what is the
broader industry? Like are there different technologies at your plant?
Like what, I don't know anything about that side of
the business. Tell me something about it.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You know, you need to imagine a refinery, right, that's
exactly what this looks like. If you drive by our
plant in Soupertin, you it'll be like you're looking at
a refinery, a refinery that is small, because refineries actually
take very dense liquid and convert it to a bunch
of different products through a bunch of unit operations. We
(27:11):
only have really compact unit operation. It's really three steps.
Takes the ethanol to ethylene, think of that, then take
ethylene to sustainable aviation fuel in a two step process.
The ethanol to ethylene is done with our partner technique.
They have a technology that efficiently takes ethanol to ethylene
(27:31):
and then we go from.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
There and is the hope that you will use your
Lonza tech ethanol as the input at this plant soon eventually.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Sure, we will use it at this plant. But also
one of the things we're doing is building plants together.
We have projects across the world in Europe, in the
Middle East where we're taking waste like municipal solid waste,
taking it to ethanol and taking ethanol to saffaf is
sustainable aviation. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
And we call that circular air by the way, that
joint offering because obviously it's circular carbon from waste to
aviation fuel, and it's the joint lens of tech lansa jet.
So we do expect this plant, to expect other plants
to use our ethanol, but moreover, we expect integrated solutions.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I feel like there's this long history of people trying
to use synthetic biology biotechnology to make fuel, and it
has been really hard for a long time, and people
talk about why it used to be a bad idea
or why people who aren't making fuel talk about why
(28:51):
fuel is not the right thing to make, Like, tell
me about that history.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I mean, look, you're trying to do something that's been
done in a specific way for over one hundred and
twenty years, right, and so now you're going to say, well,
I'm going to do it in new way and oh,
by the way, it's going to be cheaper, cleaner, and better.
And it's like, okay, let's get a dose of realism here.
(29:19):
When you look at sustainable aviation fuel. I believe that
the use of fat, soils and lipids, which is what
is being done today. We're seeing more and more plants
being built, so you're starting to get to the Okay,
this is the cheaper part of the curve. Just like
we did with solar, just like we did with cell phones.
The only problem is now you've got to get to
(29:40):
a point where you're going to be feedstock limited. And
we just have to do the same thing with our
technology and other technologies that are out there. Build enough,
get to capacity, reduce costs, and keep building. And I
think most people don't think about technology that way. Is
sort of expected magically to show up without remembering. I
(30:00):
always used to laugh, you know, I remember in twenty ten,
because I have these articles. You'd see all of these publications.
You know, solar is ten years out and will always
be ten years out. Those were literally the headlines, right,
you're nodding, so I know you remember this. But here
we are. You can't turn around without seeing a solar installation,
(30:21):
and every day we make it cheaper and better. It's
cost competitive with fossil carbon power. And I just think
people need to realize new technologies take twenty thirty plus
years to deploy in a way that makes sense, and
our technology is completely disruptive. Nobody had ever done this
gas fermentation before, so I think a thirty year cycle
(30:44):
to get to where you're economically viable and competitive everywhere
is not unreasonable. We've been around for twenty years. We
know our technology works. We derisk the technology, we've deristd
the market. But now instead of deploying five at a time,
we want to desploy twenty at a time. So you
got to reduce the costs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
What what do you think might go wrong? Like, what
would be reasons you might not make it to where
you want to get to.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, that's a lovely question. The hurdles are big, right,
you know, legislation stands against you. Nobody'd ever heard of
us doing gas fermentations. So corn and sugar cane, ethanol
get incentives in the United States that we don't receive.
(31:38):
So it's very hard to be competitive with something that's
getting an incentive. I used the Tesla example. Remember Tesla
couldn't sell in New Jersey because it didn't have dealerships
and there were rules that actually block new ideas, new
marketing methods, new sales method and that's the same thing
with what we do. I also think there is this
(31:59):
natural skepticism of anything new, and we always try to
find the problem with it. And so for the first
thirty years, twenty years, you've got to deal with people
telling you what you're doing is wrong, and nobody ever says, Okay,
what you're doing may not work, but that's okay because
what we're doing isn't working and so we need to
(32:21):
replace it. And so to me, what slows us down
is people asking the wrong questions. And I always say,
this is a sector where we need allies. We need
people saying they're going to get there. You need to
push them along and to help them along. And this
(32:43):
is what we're going to do to help these industries grow.
Rather than not cost effective, not the same profit, not
a good idea, I mean that negativism is draining.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Thank you for going down the road of the sad story. Oh,
let's talk about the happy story now, Like, tell me
the happy story. What's what's the happy story of the
next ten years.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, the happy story is very simple. We have shown
that you can take every type of waste carbon that's
already above ground and make the products you use every
day sustainable aviation fuel. We decarbonized steel mills at the
same time that we decarbonize aviation, right, And you can
poo poo that all you want, but the fact is
we've done it. We've shown it. It works. And nobody
(33:32):
can tell me that fresh fossil carbon is the future,
and I can tell you, let's just keep that carbon
in the ground. So what do the next ten years
look like for us? We're going to keep showing you
that We're going to show you that food, fuel and
chemicals can all be made from waste carbon that's above ground.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And specifically, like, what are the sort of big, big
projects in the kind of short to medium term for you?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Well, I think some of our big projects. First of all,
we've got to scale sustainable aviation fuel, and so showing
our first plant and its economics is going to enable
a bunch of other plants to get built. The other
thing I want to show is integration more and more
to reduce costs. What you don't want is a unit
(34:21):
that makes ethanol and a unit that makes aviation fuel,
you know, next to each other and not integrated, or
a unit that makes hydrogen that we need to convert
CO two being a separate standalone. The more we integrate,
the cheaper things get right. And so to me, as
we make our technology cheaper, I want to also show
(34:43):
that integration with others is cheaper and cheaper, and that's
where your economies come in. And the final thing I
want to do is just really show that biology needs
to be thought of differently. We you know, petroleum is
densest liquid known to man. That's why we've grown these massive,
centralized refineries. What biology can do is use local resources,
(35:08):
enabl a country to use its local feedstocks and be
able to make selectively the product it wants. So do
you want to make aviation fuel great? Do you want
to make polyester great? And we want to do this
and leverage the power of biology to enable economies to
(35:30):
grow while their population grows, because the biggest concern I
have is if you're developing economy and you're watching your
population grow, every time they buy something, a dollar goes
out of the country, so somebody else gets paid for
the goods. I want people to be able to grow
(35:50):
and grow their economies and grow the jobs and grow
everything at the same time. And I think biology, with
its ability to be distributed and local enables that, and frankly,
I don't think anything else does. And I want to
show that over the next five to ten years.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
I want to finish with a lightning round oh uh Oh.
Your dad, I have read, was an airline mechanic. Yeah,
(36:31):
and I'm curious how his work influenced you.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
He taught me how to fix things and to want
to fix things, and to care about aviation.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
What was something you fixed with your dad?
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Oh? Everything. I crawled around planes, although I never fixed anything.
I just crawled around with him on planes and cars
and things.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, that's cool. What's one thing I should do if
I visit Columbia?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Oh, my gosh, eat the food. Yeah, the food is amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
What's one thing I should eat?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
My favorite petic I don't know what are That's some
plantains that are not ripe, so they're green, and you
sqush them and you fry them and you squish them
again and you put salt on them. It's kind of
like the French fries of Barankilla, which is where I
grew up.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I understand that you went to the Paris Olympics. Oh,
and you know, obviously you work a lot with microbes,
and so I'm curious. Would you swim in the sun? Ah?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
I no.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Tell me about the first greyhound that you rescued.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We rescued two dogs, two greyhounds that had badly broken
their legs and they had been repaired by an agency,
and then we adopted them. I learned that thirty percent
of greyhounds wash out because they've broken something or have
(38:12):
been injured. It's a very sad, sad, sad thing, and
they are amazing dogs, amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of Lanz Tech. Today's show
was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by
Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer. You can
email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another episode
of What's Your Problem
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